I like current blood and frost. Considering they have barely changed in 2-3 years should tell you plenty about how well they are set up now. The changes to me seem to be simply switching strike names and reducing everything to 1 rune cost/ 20 RP cost. This would pretty much make a pure set rotation with no variation as it would be always holding a spare rune for procs etc. Best thing is DK right now does feel sufficiently different from all other classes and those changes to me would make us feel more like a monk or similar with a set rotation following 2 resources (we currently have 4/5 resources, your change makes it 3 - 2 of which are almost going to be essentially the same to use in rotation)

Best thing I would like to see is the return of the old presences as raid buffs (blood gave healing by % of damage etc) along with other classes which lost those (feral druids leader of the pack, paladin judgements of light/wisdom, priests VT/VE perma regen). Make them adequately weak enough to not be OP but those things were nice.

The reason why we haven't changed too much since Cata is the fact that they have designed themselves into a corner with the current rune mechanics. That's why we had so many problems trying to fit Soul Reaper into the mix during MoP Beta. They want the two specs to play differently, but use some of the same abilities. That just doesn't work so easily with the rune system.

I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that using single rune abilities would create set rotations with no variation. Between KM, Rime, Sudden Doom, AMS absorption and differing amounts of targets, your priorities would change. The fact that you would essentially have two rune resource pools actually makes things more interesting.

I understand that what I have laid out is a lot of change. And it may be difficult to perceive how it directly effects the way you play your DK. But, the design is solid. The gameplay would not be too different than what we have now. Things would just be more organized visually in a user-friendly way. But, by doing it in this specific manner, we open up new opportunity for better gameplay.

The reason why we haven't changed too much since Cata is the fact that they have designed themselves into a corner with the current rune mechanics. That's why we had so many problems trying to fit Soul Reaper into the mix during MoP Beta. They want the two specs to play differently, but use some of the same abilities. That just doesn't work so easily with the rune system.

I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that using single rune abilities would create set rotations with no variation. Between KM, Rime, Sudden Doom, AMS absorption and differing amounts of targets, your priorities would change. The fact that you would essentially have two rune resource pools actually makes things more interesting.

I understand that what I have laid out is a lot of change. And it may be difficult to perceive how it directly effects the way you play your DK. But, the design is solid. The gameplay would not be too different than what we have now. Things would just be more organized visually in a user-friendly way. But, by doing it in this specific manner, we open up new opportunity for better gameplay.

Now I just gotta chime in again: Please don't state opinions as fact.

The reasons we didn't change much since cata is not because Blizzard limited themselves but because they like the design and want it to stick.
The reason it was hard to get Soul Reaper into the mix was because the shit numbers it pulled that weren't worth a possible loss of rune recharge time.

Of the 3 DK specs and 4 DK playstyles none feel the same:
Blood: DS focus, HS/BB/DnD situational, wait for the right moment to strike, easy to get screwed by RNG
Unholy: FeS/SS focus, stack diseases, manage your Menagerie, switch from Festerblight to execute at the right time, mostly unaffected by RNG (outside Festerblight setup)
2h Frost: OB Focus, few big hitters, less spam, possible to get screwed by RNG
DW Frost: HB/FS Focus, lots of button pushing and ability spam, almost unaffected by RNG

The thing about people thinking that single rune abilities don't add anything interesting to the game is mostly because you don't make it seem any more interesting to have 1 big + 1 small rune pool with no overlapping vs. 3 small rune pools with overlapping ability costs.

Your changes would basically make every spec into a simplified DW Frost. The only thing your changes open us up to is to become Monk 2.0 "DW Frost Version" now with plate armor, separate energy bars for dps and utility and a finer chi counter.

A simplified version of something is what most people see as "dumbed down".

The reasons we didn't change much since cata is not because Blizzard limited themselves but because they like the design and want it to stick.
The reason it was hard to get Soul Reaper into the mix was because the shit numbers it pulled that weren't worth a possible loss of rune recharge time.

Of the 3 DK specs and 4 DK playstyles none feel the same:
Blood: DS focus, HS/BB/DnD situational, wait for the right moment to strike, easy to get screwed by RNG
Unholy: FeS/SS focus, stack diseases, manage your Menagerie, switch from Festerblight to execute at the right time, mostly unaffected by RNG (outside Festerblight setup)
2h Frost: OB Focus, few big hitters, less spam, possible to get screwed by RNG
DW Frost: HB/FS Focus, lots of button pushing and ability spam, almost unaffected by RNG

The thing about people thinking that single rune abilities don't add anything interesting to the game is mostly because you don't make it seem any more interesting to have 1 big + 1 small rune pool with no overlapping vs. 3 small rune pools with overlapping ability costs.

Your changes would basically make every spec into a simplified DW Frost. The only thing your changes open us up to is to become Monk 2.0 "DW Frost Version" now with plate armor, separate energy bars for dps and utility and a finer chi counter.

A simplified version of something is what most people see as "dumbed down".

That statement is not opinion. In the next upcoming expansion, where do you think they might fit another ability into every single spec's priorities? What would it cost? How would it function within our current "rotation" of abilities? Think about that for a moment. Are they going to add a 5th, 6th and 7th option of disease application? Because I love needing to use 3-4 separate abilities to do the same damn thing as it stands right now. :/

They have backed themselves into a corner. Soul Reaper felt extremely clunky when it cost a Death rune during MoP Beta. So, they did what they didn't want to do and made it cost a different rune for each spec. That worked out well for Unholy and Blood. But, it is still awful for 2H Frost. Any time I get stuck with only 2 Unholy runes, I just want to punch a kitten. Due to the design of DW and 2H Frost, they value Runes versus Runic Power differently. That's a whole different obstacle that limits future potential gameplay.

I'm not trying to make things "more interesting". I'm trying to make things more smooth and functional. This applies to both PvE and PvP. We haven't talked much about how these changes affect PvP gameplay. But, that was most definitely taken into consideration with the design. Having a specific pool for our utility abilities is a huge plus from that perspective.

And I still don't get the Monk comparisons. The devil is in the details.

I applaud you for putting so much time and effort into these ideas, don't get too hung up on people who simply disregard them straight away. However, you're obviously pretty confident that your redesign is an improvement on the current DK model and seem like you don't want to hear that some may disagree with you. It's a discussion forum at the end of the day and, unfortunately some people just won't agree - nobody is right or wrong.

I've tried to imagine the way your proposed redesign would work. It's fine, there are some solid ideas in there and the simplification of the rune system overall is not necessarily a bad thing... However, (from a purely functional/design standpoint) there are some issues. What's the point in having death strike PLUS a different strike on the spec specific runes that would (I'm guessing) do comparable damage? The rune tied to the attack which does the most damage would influence the rune-regen talent that we take. I.e. If death strike does more damage than scourge strike then you can be damn well sure that I'll be taking runic conversion over the other options.

The other problem seems to be that you've gone a really round-about way of fixing the current single target issue with rime procs (Icy Touch to Ice Blast). While I think the idea of a dynamic ability seems fairly cool I don't see why it couldn't just work like overpower and become active/usable on rime procs (like the old rune strike on parries). IMO all that needs to be done to "fix" rime is having Icy touch do more single target damage than howling blast (IT for Single target, HB for AOE)... The "death siphon replaced death strike for a healing ability" idea isn't a terribly bad one but if that was your go-to ability (damage wise) anyway then it's a no brainer as a passive heal OR (on the flip side) it wouldn't be viable compared to mark of blood/death pact if it wasn't in your rotation anyway due to losing runes for soul reaper (and the other talent options not costing a rune). Essentially you could have every single attack as a Blood DK healing you and if this was balanced (to the point of still needing a healer in instances/raids) then that would mean Death Siphon just doesn't heal enough to be competitive. Also, having a talent tree just to decide whether or not you're DW/2H/Tank(or pet-focussed... Which should just be Unholy anyway IMO) seems a bit like a waste of a talent tier.

Additionally, from a tank POV:

Runic Empowerment would be a necessity as Blood runes would be the ones to use the shield/heal mechanic.
Boneshield would be a necessity as a talent.
The Talent that corresponded to the weapon you're wielding would likely be a requirement as a talent, forcing you to take death siphon and heal yourself for an insane amount (As I'm guessing you still wouldn't be able to control when blood beasts exploded to heal)

Unfortunately I don't think that's what Blizzard is really going for with the new talent system. We might lack a little bit of flavor and, IMO it would be nice to have a tier of talents which provide some sort of awesome DPS ability (which would still be comparable, DPS-wise to the other options in that tier) but you can't argue that all of our current talents can be viable/competitive in specific situations. Also snap-threat generation during large-scale AOE could be a bitch compared to today if you're relying on DnD and a 3 target cleave for the first few seconds before you can even spread your diseases and use blood boil. On that same note removing blood boil from Unholy simplifies our AOE to the point of "I'm going for a cup of tea now" and isn't fun for anybody IMHO.

How would rune regen work? Would the 4x Blood runes (for example) regen two at a time akin to today's model or do they regen independently? Depending on how this works we'd either end up GCD locked soon after the first tier (akin to DW frost today) or we'd spend multiple tiers waiting seconds between attacks without even having plague leech to fill GCDs. Like it or not Obliterate and Festering Strike allow us to use haste-plate and by next tier we'll be reforging most of it away as Unholy - do you plan for us to go for mastery/crit gear or to spend our time waiting 15seconds between attacks before we reach a relatively decent gear level? Even 2H frost (today) can have minimum downtime at 463ilvl just by gemming for haste rather than strength.

Originally Posted by Clash1

That statement is not opinion. In the next upcoming expansion, where do you think they might fit another ability into every single spec's priorities? What would it cost? How would it function within our current "rotation" of abilities? Think about that for a moment.

I'm pretty sure a lot of people have thought about this and I don't quite see how it applies. Take Rogues (for example), their relatively-simple resource system is just energy and combo points. Haste/talents increases energy regen and they spend it on abilities which grant combo points for use on finishing moves... They have a wide variety of abilities already so where's the room to add new ones?

There's absolutely nothing about our current resource system that limits the addition of new abilities, or (what will most likely happen) the tweaking of some others (likely being SR + AMZ). While I do admire the thought processes that have gone into this design I simply can't agree with them and that's just my opinion. The majority of DKs I know are supremely happy with how the class is at the moment. Despite issues with 2H frost now dropping behind unholy on some encounters where cleave/an amount of AOE is important, and those people who just want frost to go back to the cata days of basically being a visual difference between 2H/DW you'll be hard pressed to find players who feel that we're broken.

I'm not saying there isn't room for improvement, there is. I'd love to see Obliterate have an element of frost damage to increase the value of mastery for 2H. The same goes with Killing Machine, it could have a chance to proc off white crits (for example, rather than hits) to raise the value of crit slightly. I'd love for Control Undead to allow the capturing of undead minions - being able to keep a few different varieties depending on the encounter or the team you're facing in PvP (would still be temp-summons for frost). I'd love AMZ to be baseline (and less situational, working in a similar way to devotion aura) so we could bring some utility. None of these things require a new resource system - they just bring more flavor to the class and I'd wager more people would rather see those sorts of things implemented than a total rune system redesign.

Again, I'm not trying to crap on your ideas dude - just some constructive criticism.

And I still don't get the Monk comparisons. The devil is in the details.

Our runes regenerate almost identical to energy, except we currently have 3 pools or energy bars for each rune type frost/blood/unholy etc. Your proposal strips the rune system down to only having 2 pools or energy bars for spec specific and death runes. It furthers this by making every spec value the two pools the same, spec specific abilities and death rune abilities.
So it becomes very monk like spam the spec specific runes for damage abilities then use the death runes for utility abilities. Its the same energy > chi back and forth monks have. Two resources for different abilities.

Rime: It makes sense thematically that a frost damage attack (Frost Strike) would gather excess frost power (Rime) to unleash a strong frost attack (Frost Blast). The reason that Icy Touch would transform to Ice Blast when Rime procs is just for practical purposes. I don't want to add more buttons to my hotbar. Also, since we are only using one disease (Frost Fever), I don't want it's application to be passive through Rime. We would want it to be an active decision just like we have now with Blood Plague for Frost spec.

Death Strike would do less damage than Heart Strike, Frost Strike and Scourge Strike. That would also apply to Death Siphon if you choose that talent, since Death Siphon would directly replace Death Strike. The main reason for Death Strike is to have a decent single target strike in PvE to use when you can't use your cleave move (CC situations) and as a vehicle for Death Siphon as a healing option. So, you would never want to choose Runic Conversion for PvE.

From a tank perspective, I don't think it's bad to have some strong talents for tanking. MoB would be strong. But, it's still not instant and it might not save you in a Purgatory situation. So, there still might be times where Death Pact is the right choice. It's very debatable though. IMO, there will always be one talent better than the others depending on the situation.

I don't like the idea of Master of Darkness being mandatory for tanking. That tier is definitely problematic. I like the concepts individually, but I'm not even sure they work together to form a cohesive tier of talents. I'm up for ideas on how to improve it.

I'm fine with Boneshield being the first choice for tanking. The importance of having it in the talent grid extends to PvP survivability where it is desperately needed.

The balance between Runic Empowerment and Runic Corruption for PvE would be complicated to say the least. The general idea is that RC would generate more resources. I'm not a math guy, so I can't give you an exact percentage. RE on the other hand, would give back the PvE specific runes. The big difference between live and this concept is the difference in the value of Haste depending on the choice.

Runic Empowerment would be strong for Blood spec because you would only be generating Blood Runes. But, you would only be able to "bank" one Blood Rune to keep the feedback loop going without wasting Blood Runes. Runic Corruption on the other hand, would allow you to "bank" two Blood Runes once things got rolling. So, there would be a difference in playstyle available there for those who so choose.

The snap aggro of Blood in AOE is a good debate. I'm not sure this would be a big issue or not.

Pestilence would be the AOE ability for Unholy even though the damage would come strictly from the diseases themselves. Every time the diseases are spread and reapplied, that's another chance for Wandering Plague to proc and do damage. So, Pestilence would act like Blood Boil does now for Unholy. It wouldn't be just fire and forget if that's how you envisioned it.

As I touched on before, runes would generate half a pair at a time just like on live. Granted, if I had my say, they would regenerate just like in WotLK. But, Blizz loves Runic Empowerment. So, I'm basing things on the knowledge that rune regeneration would never be changed.

Mastery. We need to want Mastery in all situations. Our AOE hinges on our Mastery. So, we need to want Mastery for single target as well. Using single rune abilities helps by suppressing the value of Haste. Granted, removing Plague Leech and Horn of Winter out of the rotation increases the value of Haste. The idea is for us to reach a Haste cap window quickly and then focus on Mastery. Currently, DW Frost is a good example of how the secondary stat progression might look throughout a full expansion.

On the topic of design limitations of the current model: Lets take a look at Frost. What could you possibly come up with to enhance gameplay? Obliterate hits like a truck for 2H Frost. You had to even be scrupulous in your use of our Execute ability outside of our T15 4-piece. You can't add anything rune-wise there because of Obliterate. And you can't offer more uses for RP, because DW Frost hinges on a hard hitting Frost Strike. That's why we got crap like Plague Leech for this expansion. There is no room to move at the moment.

IMO, there would be more complaints about DK gameplay if we weren't doing well on the DPS charts. People are willing to play things that are broken when they blow shit up. It's just the way things work.

---------- Post added 2013-04-29 at 11:16 PM ----------

This is a very rough and generalized idea of how our ability damage might break down with some Mastery:

IMO, there would be more complaints about DK gameplay if we weren't doing well on the DPS charts. People are willing to play things that are broken when they blow shit up. It's just the way things work.

Aye, I somewhat agree ;-) But I personally don't see them as broken at the moment. At current gear levels everything flows really nicely. Honestly the only complaint I currently have with Unholy is Dark Transformation not causing reaping (really messes up my AOE rotation!). 2H frost's issue with runes becoming unsynced is minimised dramatically with BT, all in all 2H could use a (very)slight damage nerf to obliterate with SR being moved to a shadowfrost damage school to compensate.

5am after a nightshift is not going to be the best time for me to come up with new abilities but they don't have to be purely "Does X amount of damage" simply because we have enough of those already. It could be something along the lines of an AOE execute, an ability that grants a temporary buff of some sort or an AOE version of frost strike/death coil (using runic power and can proc whatever talent we've chosen).

The openings ARE there for more abilities. The main thing to ask is do we need them? You could look at DKs as being a fairly binary/boring class or you could see them as the model that Blizzard are looking to move towards. We know that they're unhappy with the overall number of abilities a lot of classes have (especially hunters) and I could see them "pruning" some abilities from class arsenals once the next expansion rolls around. If that were to occur then it could be safe to assume DKs would be relatively unchanged.

TBH all i want backn from a dk is be able to choose if i want to tank in frost/blood/unholy... Thats 1 of the main things that made me play a dk... 3 tank specs 3 dps specs... it was unquie... made us that special snowflake... why cant we get that again

"Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable."
"If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking."

TBH all i want backn from a dk is be able to choose if i want to tank in frost/blood/unholy... Thats 1 of the main things that made me play a dk... 3 tank specs 3 dps specs... it was unquie... made us that special snowflake... why cant we get that again

As much as it was hilarious to play like that (HB DW tanking anyone?) Blizz did say at the time that it was purely an experiment, and while fun, was waaay too much work to ensure that every change the made to any ability didn't break any one of our (essentially) 6 specs.

As for the rest of it, the only major comment I would make is @vmagik: I would personally rather see the pet/dw/2h option as a talent purely because if you love playing one spec but a tier happens to be absolute trash for your unique mechanic (eg DS for pet classes) it makes fights annoying.

For the last 2 expansions I have (for various reasons) always kept a blood spec, meaning that I have (as a reasonably serious raider) kept whatever spec is the top DPS for that tier as my OS. This means that I haven't felt I could really play unholy for quite a while as personally I feel like I need the few % that the 'top' spec provides to make up for my lack of gear due to it being my OS. The evidence that i've read from blues suggests that a talent tree like this is very much in line with blizz's design intent because it gives players the choice to play the spec they want rather than being 'forced' to play frost because they hate managing pets or forced into 2h because they don't like the play of DW frost.
For me a change like that fits with what I have read and what it seems like the dev design intentions currently are.

I know what you mean - but, if the tier was "balanced" then you're essentially going to be choosing that 2h/DW/pet tier based on whether you have decent 2h/1h weapons or your gear is a higher ilvl than your weapons. It's still not really going to be a choice. Like the pre-mop talent tiers it's just going to be an illusion of choice and you'll have people posting "I don't want to be a pet spec but I've had no luck with weapon drops" etc on forums.

IMO the new talent system isn't there to have a tier where you can choose what sort of weapon you use - that should be passive. The talent system is there to add a variety of choices that aren't obvious. At the moment the only talent that makes no sense in a particular spec is rolling blood (for frost)... Everything else can be chosen depending on the encounter or how it feels to play.

I know what you mean - but, if the tier was "balanced" then you're essentially going to be choosing that 2h/DW/pet tier based on whether you have decent 2h/1h weapons or your gear is a higher ilvl than your weapons. It's still not really going to be a choice. Like the pre-mop talent tiers it's just going to be an illusion of choice and you'll have people posting "I don't want to be a pet spec but I've had no luck with weapon drops" etc on forums.

You have a very valid point. Therefore, I have come up with a tentative plan for a tweaked final tier. Check the link in the first post for the full visualization.

2 - Deathbringer
When wielding a two-handed weapon, all melee attacks deal an additional X% damage. And when dual-wielding, all your melee Strikes also deal damage with your off-hand weapon.

3 - Master of DarknessBlood: The Bloodworms that spawn with the Blood Parasite ability are replaced with Blood Beasts. The Blood Beasts do X% more damage.Frost: The Raise Dead spell now summons a Coldwraith which does not have a limited duration and acts as a pet under your control.Unholy: The duration of Dark Transformation is increased to 20 seconds and the duration of your Summon Gargoyle ability is increased to 1 minute.

---------- Post added 2013-05-01 at 01:56 AM ----------

Also changed around the abilities for Frost. People want the specs to play differently.

So, Icy Touch would now be our main frost rune ability for single targets. Howling Blast for 3+ targets.
Frost Strike is used only with Rime.
Obliterate is the RP dump.

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Also, saw no point in Unholy using two diseases in the proposed design.

So, Unholy would now apply one disease tentatively called Crypt Fever with Outbreak.